The Greatest Failure Program

Ma Bitar, Rouba Mansour:

KAL's cartoon | Jan 13th 2024 Edition  The Islamic religious revival in recent decades has been accompanied by a relatively widespread spread of fundamentalist movementsو These movements were not, as some imagine, the result of an external conspiracy, but rather the result of a structural defect in the mind of these societies, the result of a culture founded on a particular reading of the single religious text, which is multiple in jurisprudence (Islam is one and multiple).

The resurgence of fundamentalism is not due to its intellectual strength and its record of historical failure, but rather to the failure of the opposing force, namely the nationalist forces, which rode the emasculated Arabism, starting from the 1950s. Arabism failed to achieve a society of justice, democracy, and progress, and its failure created a vacuum, which it was logical to fill with something better than it. As a result of the assassination of the forces that could be an alternative to Arabism, fundamentalism advanced with the program of the greatest failure, known under the slogan “Islam is the solution.” Thus, the region developed according to the rules of Arab development backwards, that is, from bad to worse.

   The political cultural counterpart developed according to a method from bad to worse, Instead of an alternative culture promising success, a culture imposed failure emerged, It is no wonder here that a culture whose source is religion is active in societies where religion is one of its basic components, The marginal, shallow, superstitious religious culture was not able to occupy the scene alone, so it united with the remnants of Arab forces to form a power-sharing authority according to the principle of whoever can and whoever needs, The religious culture gave the authority its religious and Arab legitimacy and retained a portion of the privileges so that what Aflaq said was achieved: “Arabism is Islam, and Islam is Arabism ” The alliance of Arabism-Islam, and Islam-Arabism led the country for nearly a century and brought the entire region to the situation we see today, which is represented by complete collapse on all levels and aspects.

The various and diverse fundamentalist forces can be called political Islam, which embraces many currents and groups that differ from each other in many ways, Some are armed and others are unarmed, Some have slaughtered, and others have not yet slaughtered, but they are qualified to practice slaughter, The intellectual background is the same for all of them, This intellectual background is represented by the comprehensive view of religion as a program of salvation in this world and the hereafter, Salvation on earth is mostly political, and it is represented by the establishment of a religious state, whether it is a caliphate or an imamate.

Since political Islam is totalitarian, it was inevitable that it would intervene in all aspects of life, from the smallest to the largest, It would invent slogans such as claiming that crises are a result of straying from religion, and also enshrine the inferiority of women and diminish their value, We have seen this point in several events, for example, the murder of the Mansouriya girl, who was deemed worthy of being killed because she was not wearing a hijab(veil), Shortly after, the Jordanian girl who was wearing a hijab was assassinated, further contradicting the Brotherhood’s theories about veiling, All of this is in addition to the well-known issue of preventing women from working and not providing them with education (Sheikh Al-Huwayni), the emphasis on establishing Quranic schools and religious institutes, and the fostering of hostility towards Western civilization while simultaneously promoting asylum in the West and defending the presence of millions there , Then, they incite these refugees to isolation and withdrawal, to disavow practices related to respecting democratic life and the rule of law, and to deny the diversity that their presence in the West has created, as if they envision Islamization,Nearly 800 million Westerners overnight did not notice that their asylum, intrusion, poverty, and backwardness do not represent a role model for anyone, Why would Europe become Islamized when Europeans see and experience what religion has done to the Arabs? Are their lives, their fate, their backwardness, and their violence a role model for anyone?

It is important to understand political Islam and the objective factors that led to its resurgence among Arab groups, and then to understand the essence of the causal relationships between the crisis of these societies and the political and religious conditions that these peoples have been living in for centuries, Political Islam is not a solution to any problem, but rather one of the manifestations and expressions of the problem, In addition, political Islam represents a disastrous, regressive escalation. Just imagining the Islam of the Taliban, or the Islam of the Somali youth, or the Islam of ISIS, or the regressions of the Muslim Brotherhood is terrifying,The partnership between Arab nationalists and the Muslim Brotherhood helped prolong the life of each of them, yet life has deteriorated considerably with them, So what would happen if the Muslim Brotherhood were to ascend to power alone!

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